I Beg Your Pardon?
by GrapefruitRed
Summary: Just whatever random stories pop into my head. Mixed genres and characters, but most will have Deryn. T to play it safe. And just so I don't have to say it ten thousand times, I am not Scott Westerfield!
1. Duty

Sorry, Not Scott

A string of curses escaped Deryn Sharp's mouth as the first gun shots cascaded through midair, cutting through anything and everything unlucky enough to be topside on the Leviathan. Hydrogen sniffers searched frantically for any sign of a leak on the surface, and there was an air of suspense, though chaos was mightily present. One shrill howl and it would all be over, just like that. The spine was an absolute disaster, with fellow officers and petty laborers alike plummeting off the side of the great air beast. Deryn held tight to the ratlines as thousands of tiny shards of metal tore through flesh and ended the lives of countless Darwinists. A lifeless body hung just below Deryn, probably just some poor fellow attempting to escape the deathly shower originating from the Clanker forces. She forced herself not to look, though secretly she feared that if she did look, it would be a friend. Someone had released the strafing hawks, but they only shredded one air machine before the Germans released a mechanical net of sorts that draped over the birds of prey and pulled them down towards the earth where so many bodies lay already.

All this absorbed in a fraction of a second, Midshipman Sharp placed upon herself the coldhearted clarity required by a soldier in war. Or at least that's what she had read in the training manual. Even now she felt her composer slip, and she stiffened, or as much as one could when scaling the ratline. After all, she had her duty to perform.


	2. Duty 2: Flying Free

Deryn had hardly just reached topside when a large _bang!_ resonated from the starboard engine. The taste of smoke was in the air. Smoke was not good. Smoke was fire. And on an airship filled to the brim with hydrogen gas, a single spark could be deadly. Their fate was already sealed. Barking Clanker machines, someone should have known that one of the unpredictable pieces of unliving clart would have erupted into flame eventually. _Clanker… Alex! Barking spiders Alek is working in the engines!_ They had only seconds before the fire would reach the skin and burn through, enveloping the airbeast – and everyone on it – in a giant inferno of flame. Deryn moved faster than Tazza on one of her arm-wrenching walks above deck, and rounded the side of the ship just in time to see the starboard engine come loose from the skin of the enormous beastie and begin to plummet to the ground.

"Aleeeek!" And in that very second Deryn was no longer the brave, cocky midshipman Dylan Sharp, but a terrified 15 year old girl, and anyone who sole a glance at her would see her exposed from the inside out. With no regard for her personal safety, the now _very female_ Deryn Sharp leapt from her hold on the ratlines. If we are all to die someday after all, why not take one last flight with the one you love?


	3. Love is for the Weak

Why the Leviathan was over Austria-Hungary was the least of Deryn Sharp's troubles. At the present time, she was scaling the ratlines of the massive airship, which was in the process of being ripped apart by three Clanker flying machines. Bullets were flying every which way and, on top of that, her hair had grown out and was whipping around in her face, distorting her vision. Deryn mused that perhaps the real reason she dressed up as a man and joined the His Majesties Royal Air Force was so she could hack off the infuriating bundle.

But this was no time for idle thoughts; she needed to help Newkirk with feeding the flechette bats, though hopefully the bumrag could put aside his daft Monkey Luddite fears and make some project in the meantime. Deryn didn't want to admit it, but each time the Leviathan's beasties returned to the ship, their numbers were fewer and fewer.

Dead soldiers and officers, men she probably knew, hung from their harnesses all around her, but she forced herself not to look at their faces. Any stray bullet could fly out and hit her, and that would be it. It would all be over. She would just be another soul lost to the chaos of war another body that they wouldn't be able to return to her mother in Glaslow because she failed to attach her harness to the side of the ship.

But she was Midshipman Dylan Sharp, possibly the most valuable 'man' in the Air Force, and she would not go down without a fight.

More to come, I promise! Please review and I'm sorry if I mispelled anything, it was kind of rushed.


	4. Love is for the Weak 2: A Tear

A single tear in the skin of the Leviathan would send them all up in a plume of flame, but the leather surface was strong, and Deryn doubted that the spray of bullets could rip through, at least not for a while.

The flechette bats were being fed what must have been their fourth round of metal spikes. What Deryn thought had been bad earlier had gotten far worse as the bat's numbers were cut in half, and then again, and again, until only about a tenth of the original flock remained. But the girl still had hope, for the captain must have something up his sleeve. He was barking commander of the ship after all and he bloody well didn't get there for nothing.

"Blisters!" She swore as the ship was hit yet again by some sort of mechanic projectile. The barking contraptions were drills of sorts that were fired on to the ship and proceeded to drill through the skin. Well, _attempted_ to drill through: all of the drills so far had been taken out by the air cannons. Nasty blighters, those Clanker machines were. They must have been specifically engineered to target hydrogen breathers like the Leviathan herself.

Then there came a sound that chilled her to the bone. A single hydrogen sniffer had barked, and the sound was so ominous that Deryn was sure that it could be heard throughout the entire beastie. All went silent, that is, except for the Leviathan's Clanker motors and the enemy flying machine – only one remained.

Not even to the good part yet :D

Review, review, review!


	5. Love is for the Weak 3: Bowler Hat

Deryn moved faster than she ever thought possible. In a matter of seconds her hands and feet carried her away from the bats and up on to the spine of the giant air beast. Bodies lay strewn in endless mounds; it was impossible to tell where one corpse ended and the next began. Men stood, silently frozen in place as they began to accept their fate. The next spray of bullets would ignite the leaking hydrogen and they would all go up in flames, just like that.

All of a sudden the silence was shattered by a ruffled looking boffin rushing across the surface of the ship. The aero plane was angling back around now and it would be upon them in seconds. Dr. Barlow spotted Deryn standing at the edge of the spine and rushed towards her.

"Mr. Sharp! Where is the leak? Point me to it, now that's a good lad!" As the boffin scrambled off and Deryn stood there, with her finger outstretched, she couldn't help notice that, in her haste, the boffin had dropped her bowler hat. She couldn't say why she noticed the minor detail; it just must have been the heat of the moment. Now, in her last moments, she didn't even bother to scowl at the woman doctor for calling her 'lad'. She was a Midshipman, for heaven's sake! And serving on the Leviathan, to boot!

Really, had the woman gone bonkers? Of course it was inevitable, but Deryn had thought she would hold out a little longer. Now Dr. Barlow stood next to the expanding rip and pulled something from within her many layered skirts that resembled a tin can with some sort of nozzle. To Deryn's immense surprise, the boffin began spraying the contents of the can on the hole, which was miraculously beginning to seal. She snapped out of her reverie and sprinted over to the woman.

"Barking spiders, what is that stuff?"

"Spray-on skin, my own invention. You see, it's really quite simple…" But the sound of the returning aero plane drowned out the doctor as she started to launch into an explanation – if you could even call it that – of the invention. The sound of the motors reminded Deryn that the danger was not yet over, and she launched herself at the boffin, knocking them both to the ground, bullet spraying just where they had stood a moment ago.

"My dear boy!" But the cross-dresser was already sprinting towards the starboard engine. Towards Alek. Right when the plane fired at it.

Teehee :D just had to add an invention somewhere in there... and sorry about the cliche "heat of the moment" but I just couldn't help myself. Review please!


	6. Love is for the Weak 4: Heat

There was smoke. Lots of it. She could smell it before she even reached the engine. She peered over the side of the airship just to see the engine pod covered in flames. Was she too late? But no, through the burning inferno and haze of smoke, she could just barely make out a figure backing up against the far side of the pod. _Alek…_ He was trapped. The fire was blocking his escape. He looked up and met her eyes. Suddenly the smoke seemed to clear and she could see that resigned look in his eyes. He had accepted his fate.

"Alek! Don't you dare jump, you hear me? Don't you dare!" She was scrambling over the side of the airship, her heavy duty service boots finding purchase in even the smallest of crevices. Maybe, just maybe, if she made it to the pod in time… Her boots crashed to the metal surface and a loud clang resonated. But it was a mere whisper compared to the thump of her beating heart.

The boy looked up and stare at her in horror. "Dylan…" he mouthed, almost in shock. What, had the daft Clanker not expected her to risk her knickers for him? _Well I guess he doesn't know me as well as he thinks._ She almost laughed at the thought. He didn't know her at all. "Dylan, no! Get back!" Alek shrieked.

"Not without you!"

"Go! I'll be fine!"

"No you won't, you bumrag! I'm coming over!"

"Noo! Dylan please no. Please," The resigned look in his eyes had turned to one of pure terror. "Please." Before she could move a muscle, he was gone. She leapt forward only to realize she had her arms gripped by two of the Leviathan's crew.

"Sharp! Restrain yourself!"

"Alek! No Alek! I have to catch him, don't you see? I have to save him! Alek!" Later, after she woke up, they told her that she had screamed all the way to the sick bay, up until one of the men had enough sense to conk her on the head with the butt of his air pistol.


	7. Frying Pan

"Dylan, I-" Newkirk's voice cracked on the last word, and he pause midsentence. The boy had caught Deryn right outside her quarters after a long hard day of middy duties and doing chores for the lady boffin. Really, all she wanted was to slip in her room and fall onto her soft, soft bed…

"Wha'd'ya want?" she yawned.

"I was, uh, just, um, wondering if, uh,"

"Barking spiders, just spit it out!" she was irritated now; he was keeping her from some much-needed beauty sleep.

"Blisters… Can we talk in here?" He gently pushed open the fabricated wood door that led to her room in a questioning gesture. She sighed.

"Sure. Come on, I don't have all night." She nudged the door and it glided open. Without looking back at Newkirk, Deryn stepped inside and collapsed on the bed. She exhaled air that she didn't even know she was holding and started to unlace her standard issue airman boots. She ripped the first one off, and then the second, watching Newkirk out of the corner of her eye the entire time.

The poor boy looked more nervous than a message lizard soaring thousands of feet off the ground in a freaked huxley, and that is quite an accomplishment. Deryn couldn't help but notice that the door had somehow gotten locked in the time between when she entered and now. She looked up to meet his eyes, but he was staring out the window.

"So, what was it you wanted to-" In a fraction of a second, he had seemingly flown across the room and knocked her on her back. She was acutely aware of his knee pressing against her side and his face a mere three inches away. She closed her eyes. Soft lips pressed against hers, tentative and unsure, but sweet and lovely. They sent tingles through her entire body. Against her better judgement, she laced her arms around the boy's neck and pulled him closer, on top of her. _Alek…_ No! Her eyes snapped open and she found herself staring at the face of a trespasser, a quite attractive trespasser, but a trespasser none the less.

"No…" He kissed her neck, "No… No. No! Get off!" Her voice screeched like a girl's, but she was beyond caring as she shoved this boy, this _not Alek_, across the room. He went stumbling and fell back against the opposite wall. His shirt was off, and she realized that her tie was MIA and the first two buttons of her middy's uniform undone. In the deep recesses of her mind, she couldn't help but notice the perfectly toned muscles stretching and rolling across his glistening tan skin. _It really wasn't that bad,_ she thought, but she soon pushed that idea from her mind.

She forced herself to look into his eyes. They were hurt, that much was obvious. His crystal clear sapphire eyes shined with a translucent layer of salty liquid. _Those eyes…_ She had never really given much thought to any eyes, any eyes aside from Alek, that is. But these eyes were pure blue, just like the sky she loved so much, she could almost feel herself swimming through them… They clashed just so with his chocolate brown hair… She had never really had much chance to taste chocolate, it was a rare commodity in a time of war, but she thought she remembered one time her aunties brought it over. Its tart sweetness as it melted on her tongue. She shivered.

Snapping back to reality, she could see him make a move for the door, but she lunged for him and tackled him to the floor before he could get even one step.

"Oh no, you don't. I think you have some serious explaining to do Mister Newkirk." It came out a little more snappy than she would have liked, and he visibly flinched. When she stood up, his muscles failed to comply, and she practically dragged him back to her bed, where he promptly plopped down on his bum next to her.

Silence.

"What was-" She started, right when he said, "I'm terribly-" They both blushed.

"Newkirk?" She enquired. Her voice was small and girly and she cursed herself inwardly. But the boy hardly seemed to notice, he was too busy blushing like an overripe tomato.

"My name's James."

"Ok then, James."

"Dylan, I… no, never mind. It's nothing." He made to get up, but her hand clamped down on his arm, forcing him back into his seat.

"Barking spiders, just tell me already!"

"Ok, ok. Dylan, I, I think I'm in love. With you."

"Oh." Well that was unexpected.

"Well I see you don't feel the same way, so I guess I'll just be on my way then-" Again he tried to get up, and this time she stopped him with a shove to his muscular, chiseled chest. _No, no, no…_ Why was she having these thoughts? She loved Alek, right? But she was certain that he'd never return her affections, even if he knew her true gender. Here was a man who loved her, and she was ready to throw such a valuable gift out the bleedin' window. It would be so easy, so easy, to say she didn't love him back and that'd be it. But sometimes the easy path isn't always the right one.

He gulped. Visibly. And right there, right then, she reeled him in and took him into her bed.

xxx

Alternate ending! :

But sometimes the easy path isn't always the right one.

He gulped. Visibly. She pulled the boy into her and gave him a simple peck on the lips.

"I love you too." The corners of her mouth flicked up. He grinned full out. All of a sudden he was on top of her, smothering her face and neck with kisses.

"Woah there! Hold it for a squick will ya? I have something I need to tell you. Look at me," He did. "James, I'm a girl. My name's Deryn." She didn't think his grin could get any wider, but somehow it did.

"Aye, well that's a relief." His eyes shone bright as the sea and sky combined. This time it was she who tackled him.

The door creaked open. Deryn caught a glance of bright green emerald eyes, and auburn hair, before her love was torn away from her.

"Oy!" James screeched in surprise.

"Get your hands off my girl!" Girl?

"Alek!" She roared, but he was relentless in his beating. James was getting a few good hits in, but Alek had had the upper hand from the start.

So she hit him over the head with a frying pan.

"Blisters… I never thought one of these would come in handy."


End file.
